"But," said Herr Dremmel, "I have finished with you. And I wish," he added, pulling out his watch, "to have tea. I am driving to my fields at five o'clock."
"Oh, Robert," she begged, inexpressibly shocked, he meant to go on tormenting her then indefinitely? "please, please do whatever you're going to do to me and get it over. Here I am only waiting to be punished—"
"Punished?" repeated Herr Dremmel.
"Why," cried Ingeborg, her eyes bright with grief and shame for this steady persistence in baseness, "why, I don't think you're to punish me! You're not fit to punish a decent woman. You're contemptible!"
Herr Dremmel stared. "This," he then said, "is abuse. At least," he added, "it bears a close resemblance to that which in a reasonable human being would be abuse. However, Ingeborg, speech in you does not, as I have often observed, accurately represent meaning. I should rather say," he amended, "a meaning."
She moved across to the table to him, her eyes shining. He held his pen ready to go on writing so soon as she should be good enough to leave off interrupting.
"Robert," she said, leaning with both hands on the table, her voice shaking, "I—I never thought I'd have to be ashamed of you. I could bear anything but having to be ashamed of you—"
"Perhaps, then, Ingeborg," said Herr Dremmel, "you will have the goodness to go and be ashamed of me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us disturb the other."
"You are being so horrible that you're twisting things all wrong, and putting me in the position of having to forgive you when it's you who've got to forgive me—"
"Pray, then, Ingeborg, go and forgive me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us—"